This paper shows that the eurozone payment system does not effectively protect member states from speculative attacks. Suspicion of a departure from the common currency induces a terminal outflow of central bank money in weaker member states. TARGET2 cannot inhibit this drain but only protects...

In the winter 2011/12 a wave of internal capital flight prompted the ECB to abandon its exit strategy and to announce an unprecedented monetary expansion. We analyze this episode in several dimensions: (i) by providing an event-study analysis covering key variables from national central banks'...

Against the backdrop of the Greek three-act tragedy, we present a theoretical framework for studying Greece’s recent debt and currency crisis. The model is built on two essential blocks: first, erratic macroeconomic policymaking in Greece is described using a stochastic regime-switching model;...

We examine speculative attacks in a controlled laboratory environment featuring continuous time, size asymmetries, and varying amounts of public information. Attacks succeeded in 233 of 344 possible cases. When speculators have symmetric size and access to information: (a) weaker fundamentals...

This study concentrates on the signal approach for Kazakhstan. It focuses on the properties of individual indicators prior to observed currency crises. The indicators are used to build composite indicators. An advanced approach uses principal components analysis for the construction of composite...

The potential mutation of the Sub-Prime banking crisis into a sovereign debt one in Euro area countries is investigated. After reviewing the criteria used to measure the debt vulnerability, the balance sheet approach (BSA) is presented in order to illustrate the potential connections between...

In the current debate on the reasons and implications of the Greek and Irish euro crisis, the intra-European current account imbalances have gained rising attention. Whereas Greece and Ireland struggle for austerity in private and public spending, Germany is urged to reduce its current account...

This paper provides empirical evidence on two potential costs of shared ownership of German affiliates abroad. First, in periods of currency crises, wholly-owned affiliates, in contrast to partially-owned affiliates, seem to circumvent financial constraints by accessing capital from their parent...

We develop a simple model of the exchange rate in which agents optimize their portfolio and use different forecasting rules. They check the profitability of these rules ex post and select the more profitable one. This model produces two kinds of equilibria, a fundamental and a bubble one. In a...